Two-color interferometer for the study of laser filamentation triggered electric discharges in air

Point, Guillaume; Brelet, Yohann; Arantchouk, Léonid; Carbonnel, Jérôme; Prade, B.; Mysyrowicz, A.; Houard, Aurélien

doi:10.1063/1.4902533

Cited by 20 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…5, in some cases the guided discharge presents discontinuities that we attribute to "jumps" of the initial current from one filament to the other. Similar discontinuities were observed in the guided discharges produced in our spark gap, Marx and Tesla experiments 9,12,14,18 . The average FWHM measured on the homogeneous parts of the images changes very weakly during 130 µs with a value of 2.1 ± 0.2 mm.…”

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confidence: 58%

“…The weakly ionized plasma column and subsequent low density channel generated by laser filaments allow the precise triggering and guiding of electric discharges between two electrodes with a significant reduction of the breakdown voltage [7][8][9] . This effect is potentially useful for the development of laser lightning rod 4,[10][11] , high-voltage, high-current switches 12 , or virtual plasma antennas [13][14] .…”

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confidence: 99%

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Prolongation of the lifetime of guided discharges triggered in atmospheric air by femtosecond laser filaments up to 130 μs

Arantchouk

Honnorat

Thouin

et al. 2016

Applied Physics Letters

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Abstract:The triggering and guiding of electric discharges produced in atmospheric air by a compact 100 kV Marx generator is realized in laboratory using an intense femtosecond laser pulse undergoing filamentation. We describe here an approach allowing extending the lifetime of the discharges by injecting a current with an additional circuit. Laser guiding discharges with a length of 8.5 cm and duration of 130 µs were obtained.In the last decade femtosecond laser filaments has proved to be a powerful tool to trigger and guide electric discharges in atmospheric air 1 with gap length of a few meters [2][3][4][5][6] . The weakly ionized plasma column and subsequent low density channel generated by laser filaments allow the precise triggering and guiding of electric discharges between two electrodes with a significant reduction of the breakdown voltage [7][8][9] . This effect is potentially useful for the development of laser lightning rod 4, 10-11 , high-voltage, high-current switches 12 , or virtual plasma antennas [13][14] .For applications such as plasma antennas, extension of the filament plasma lifetime is needed, since the plasma from the filament recombines in a few nanoseconds, seriously limiting the bandwidth of antennas to frequencies v> 10 9 Hz. This can be done using additional femtosecond or nanosecond laser pulses 15-17 but this technique is particularly complex and the resulting plasma is limited to a few µs. Injection of electric current through guided discharges appears to be a more promising way. The duration of the guided discharge mostly depends on the high voltage (HV) source, with a typical duration on the order of 100 ns [2][3][4]14 . In several publications, a Marx generator was used as the HV source to produce meter scale guided discharges. In this case, the discharge duration is defined by the product of the Marx "stack" capacitance C marx and a discharge load R load . In Ref. 18, a compact Marx generator was used to create a ~ 21 cm guided discharge of duration about 600 ns due to the mentioned Marx capacitance C max ~ 2 nF and the discharge load resistance R d ~ 300 Ω. In this letter we describe a method, which allows prolonging this parameter up to 130 µs. The experiment setup is presented in Fig. 1. The circuit is composed of two parts. The first part is a Marx generator described in 18. For this experiment the generator was composed of 5 stages charged up to 20 kV DC, resulting in 100 kV output pulse with a negative polarity. An inductance L 1 was connected to the generator output electrode and served as a load up to the moment when the Marx pulse produces a breakdown in the inter-electrode gap. The Marx output electrode has a cylinder form with an axial hole allowing the laser beam to enter in the generator and to trigger it. The second electrode is a round finger with a 5 mm radius. As described in Ref. 18, a chirped pulse amplified laser system emitting at a wavelength of 800 nm is used to produce the filaments between the two electrodes and inside the Marx generator. The laser pul...

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confidence: 58%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Prolongation of the lifetime of guided discharges triggered in atmospheric air by femtosecond laser filaments up to 130 μs

Arantchouk

Honnorat

Thouin

et al. 2016

Applied Physics Letters

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“…We then concentrated on the case that yielded the most important energy deposition: a 165 mJ, 50 fs (3.3 TW) laser pulse at 800 nm focused at f /30. To characterize filamentation-induced hydrodynamics, we performed transverse interferometry on laser-generated air channels using the same instrument presented in references [20], [8] and [15]. As a large number of multifilaments is generated and, therefore, the laser beam exhibits a strong inhomogeneity, we did not expect the system to have a cylindrical symmetry, preventing us to use the Abel inversion to retrieve air density radial profiles.…”

Section: A Filamentation-generated Hydrodynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy deposition from focused terawatt laser pulses in air undergoing multifilamentation

Point¹,

Thouin²,

Mysyrowicz³

et al. 2016

Opt. Express

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Laser filamentation is responsible for the deposition of a significant part of the laser pulse energy in the propagation medium. We found that using terawatt laser pulses and relatively tight focusing conditions in air, resulting in a bundle of co-propagating multifilaments, more than 60 % of the pulses energy is transferred to the medium, eventually degrading into heat. This results in a strong hydrodynamic reaction of air with the generation of shock waves and associated underdense channels for each short-scale filament. In the focal zone, where filaments are close to each other, these discrete channels eventually merge to form a single cylindrical low-density tube over a ∼ 1 µs timescale. We measured the maximum lineic deposited energy to be more than 1 J · m −1 .

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“…In order to better characterize the local effect of filaments on the air density between the electrodes, we transversely mapped the dephasings induced by the beam 1 µs -900 µs after the pulses, in an interferometric setup detailed in [40,41] and based on a pulsed diode laser source at 640 nm and a Phasics SID4 HR wavefront analyzer. [17,20,21,42].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

HV discharges triggered by dual- and triple-frequency laser filaments

Produit¹,

Walch²,

Schimmel³

et al. 2019

Opt. Express

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We study the use of frequency upconversion schemes of near-IR picosecond laser pulses and compare their ability to guide and trigger electric discharges through filamentation in air. Upconversion, such as Second Harmonic Generation, is favorable for triggering electric discharges for given amount of available laser energy, even taking into account the losses inherent to frequency conversion. We focus on the practical question of optimizing the use of energy from a given available laser system and the potential advantage to use frequency conversion schemes.

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Two-color interferometer for the study of laser filamentation triggered electric discharges in air

Cited by 20 publications

References 41 publications

Prolongation of the lifetime of guided discharges triggered in atmospheric air by femtosecond laser filaments up to 130 μs

Prolongation of the lifetime of guided discharges triggered in atmospheric air by femtosecond laser filaments up to 130 μs

Energy deposition from focused terawatt laser pulses in air undergoing multifilamentation

HV discharges triggered by dual- and triple-frequency laser filaments

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